Baked Pumpkin Oatmeal

I took the month of September off from the Secret Recipe Club, so this is my first post in a couple of months and it feels good to be back! For October, I was assigned Scattered Thoughts of a Crafty Mom, a blog written by Jamie. Jamie has a great blog full not only of recipes, but lots of sewing and crafting tutorials – something I’m trying to get into lately! I had a lot of fun looking through her site and getting inspired.

Per usual, it took longer than it should have for me to pick a recipe, because there were several fall-themed dishes I really wanted to try! In the end I was deciding between Homemade Apple Butter, Overnight Apple Pie Oatmeal, and Baked Pumpkin Oatmeal, and inevitably the pumpkin oatmeal won out, because I had a fresh sugar pumpkin sitting in the kitchen that I wanted to roast and puree anyway. This recipe was the perfect excuse to finally make my own pumpkin puree and use it in something delicious.

This recipe is wonderful, because it is SO EASY. You mix all of the ingredients together in one large bowl, you can change the types and amount of spices to suit your tastes, and you can add in dried fruit or nuts as you please. Plus it bakes up relatively quickly, and you can keep it in the refrigerator for a week of super quick breakfasts.

I made a bunch of small tweaks to Jamie’s original recipe, adapting it to fit a 9×9 pan, and then adding some extra spices, dried cranberries and walnuts. The oatmeal mixture was quite thick when it was all assembled, so I worried a bit about how it might come out, but the end result was actually quite fantastic. I found the texture to be very close to traditional oatmeal, just a bit more firm. It still had a wonderful creamy texture, without being mushy, and a perfectly balanced spicy pumpkin flavor. It was just barely sweet, much how I eat my oatmeal regularly, and the cranberries and walnuts added interesting texture and flavor. Jamie suggested serving it with thickened cream, so I tried that just to shoot some photos, and it was quite indulgent! I plan on having this for breakfasts all week, with some added almond milk perhaps, a touch of honey and an extra sprinkle of honey.

Thanks, Jamie, for the awesome new breakfast recipe to add to my rotation!

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